Stage 4 - Hammerfest

First, my rant;

Lance Armstrong's coach, Chris Carmichael, bugs me. Being Lance's coach (or at least one of them) is a pretty impressive credential. However, every time I see the guy on OLN's coverage of the Tour he's hawking his books or his coaching service.

Let's take the Tour's first stage as an example. Coming down the starting ramp and applying pressure, Lance's right foot came out of the pedal. This caused Lance to lose momentum, spend extra effort getting his foot back into the pedal and spend lot's of effort getting back up to speed. Probably costing him five seconds.

Later during his ride, Lance impressively passed his main rival, Jan Ullrich, who had started a minute earlier. Lance came in second on the day's race and lost by 2 seconds.

During the analysis of the race, Chris Carmichael makes no mention of the equipment failure (Shimano pedals, Nike shoes) but talks about how he, as Lance's coach, noted that Lance's heartrate rose too high as he passed Ullrich. Carmichael says this was not what he told Lance to do and the extra heartbeats calculate to a loss of (surprise!) 2 seconds. Had Lance just listened to Carmichael he would have won the stage and probably gone on to wear the Yellow Jersey from start to finish.

What's the message? If you sign up for one of the Carmichael's programs you too can ride like Lance. Where was the real analysis of why Lance's foot came out of the pedal? That's what undoubtedly cost him the race.

Sure, you can spend lots of money on coaching, but unless you are a world class racer earning (or potentially earning) in excess of a million dollars a year you would probably be better served by reading everything about fitness and cycling at your local library, joining a cycling club and entering a few races. Your reading will provide everything a coaching service will with respect to science and information, and riding with a club will force you to train better.

Carmichaels' books can be pretty good, just be prepared to read about how, if only you would buy his other books, or better yet, hire his company for coaching, you too, could ride like Lance.

I don't mind a guy trying to make money, but if you're supposed to offer analysis, stop selling and analyze.

OK, I'm off the soapbox.

On Tuesdays and Saturdays there is a Velocity group ride. The Tuesday ride is usually about 40 miles. Today's Tour ride was a short team time trial and I only needed 21 miles. I did a warmup ride during lunch of 11 miles and the group ride added 39 for a total of 50. I banked some more miles today.

For some reason our group rides have developed (or degenerated) into 2 hour hammerfests. While this is great for vastly improving fitness and getting ready for races, it is indeed painful and difficult. If you don't like to drool, don't show up for the rides.

On the other hand, many races are now easy when compared to the group rides. Velocity riders have been known to hold conversations during races (until Barry yells at us to come up front and chase down the breakaways).

Riding on my own I rarely exceed 160 heart beats per minute (bpm). During group rides I've somehow exceeded my tested maximum heart rate of 196. And thanks to my Polar heart rate monitor I now know that my 'drool threshold' is 172 bpm. If you're drooling, you're working way too hard (see photo above).

Hey, maybe I can write a book just like Chris Carmichael did. Mine will be a complete fitness and cycling program developed around the amazing new scientific breakthrough know as "The Drool Threshold". Of course, for the full benfits of this new science you'll need to participate in one of my exclusive (and very expensive) "Drool Camps".